Senator Jeff Sessions was once nominated to be a judge. He expressed his own brand of empathy tempered by toughness when he said that although he liked the Ku Klux Klan, he turned against any Klansman who smoked marijuana.
Empathy for the Common Man
By
I was going to try to write something in a humorous voice about how Darth Limbaugh was directing Emperor Cheney’s imperial storm troopers, dressed as Senators Graham and Boehner, out to savage and malign Sonia Sotomayor. I figured that there must be some workable pun in the idea that they can take the white sheet [...]
Empathy, the Truth Behind the Hypocrisy
By
The Republicans are searching through Judge Sotomayor’s old speeches and party conversations to find trash to dump on her in their talk radio slime sessions. For honest people, it is more important to look at and consider what she actually said in legal decisions she wrote while she’s been a judge, deciding cases. When it [...]
Marriage Equality, Beyond the Lying
By
My first essay for the L.A. Progressive was about Proposition 8 and the lies that self proclaimed Christian activists were telling in order to promote their bigotry. It seems almost ridiculous to catalog the number of violations of the Commandment against bearing false witness that these “Christians” embraced in order to sell their ballot measure. [...]
The Republican Contract on California
By
We get to vote, again, on May 19. This time we have a bunch of ballot initiatives that the Republican Party demanded as a condition of reaching a budget “compromise” last winter. The commercial media tell us that most of these measures are failing in polling, but still have a chance at passage. Still have [...]
Reagan the Socialist, Nixon the Commie, Eisenhower the Quisling
By
Ronald Reagan was a socialist. I didn’t say it. Bill O’Reilly got permission from Republican Party policy chief Rush Limbaugh to explain, on the air, the economic logic that drives the Republican Party to now condemn Reagan as a socialist. As O’Reilly explained Republican policy, anyone who wants our wealthiest citizens to pay as little [...]
Returning to the Rule of Law: Bogus Republican Complaints about AIG Bailout
By
Last week, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) weighed in to express his outrage at the lack of government control which led to the AIG bailout scandal. This isn’t the first time that Sessions has expressed outrage over wasteful spending and lack of government control. Back when the Iraq war was young, news broke that Paul Bremer [...]
Republicans: The Tough-on-Crime Hypocrisy
By
2009 has started badly for honest communications. I’ve watched while President Obama reached “across the aisle” attempting to share the glory of trying to save the U.S. from the Bush Depression, with Republicans. I’ve watched as Democratic leaders in the California statehouse tried to convince Republican assemblymen to consider schools, infrastructure, and public health to [...]
We Are What We Eat
By
How often have we ordered up a few pizzas and a couple of six packs to sat around, focusing our political positions while expanding our waistlines? Last week, President Obama ate crow as his picks to manage health system restoration and to gain some control over government efficiency fell away under assault for their use [...]
Gaza, Until We Talk
By
It’s ironic that the Israeli assault on Gaza started just as Defiance was opening in movie theaters around the country. Defiance is the fiction film version of a true story of a group of brothers who saved Jews and attacked Nazis (and sympathizers) in Eastern Europe during WW II. Defiance is just the latest in [...]
Havana and Hamas: Obama Can Chart a New Course at Last
By
As we lament the horrors in the Gaza Strip, currently playing out on our televisions, we might be well served to reflect on 50 years of Castro’s regime in Cuba, and what lessons and opportunities our history of opposition to the Cuban revolution might hold for the incoming Obama administration.
Exclusion, Inclusion and Change: Is Rick Warren Today’s Ebenezer Scrooge?
By
by Tom Hall – Do you remember what Scrooge did when he woke after that terrible night with the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and yet to be? He flung open his window and told a boy in the street to run around to the butcher shop and buy the prize turkey hanging in the [...]
Making Education a Centerpiece of Obama’s Rebuilding Plan
By
by Tom Hall – Amidst all the talk from both conservatives and “progressives” about how President-elect Obama’s cabinet and economic-recovery choices are destroying either the nation or his own commitment to progressive ideas, it might be useful to think about Georgia Congressman, Paul Broun, who identified President Obama as a Marxist, communist, socialist, fascist.
From Kennedy to Obama: Recapturing America’s Greatness
By
by Tom Hall – The day after the election, another lawyer in my office asked, “Is this what it felt like in 1960?” When did I get old enough that people think of me when they want the wisdom of the aged? But it’s a fascinating question.
What Now?
By
Take a break. It’s been a loooonnnggg campaign. Reading the emails and news articles, checking websites, sending corrections to the smear-watch sites, volunteering at the phone bank, and all those arguments around the office. Especially with those smarmy lowlifes in the accounting and legal departments, as if their fancy educations made them smarter than the [...]
The Profits They Make from Attacking Freedom
By
by Tom Hall – In earlier essays, I talked about how a group of for-profit businessmen was promoting Proposition 8 (Proposition Hate), the anti-gay marriage measure to write bigotry into the California Constitution. I pointed out some of their hypocricies and dishonesties. But I didn’t talk much about their finances.
Sarah Palin: Gabby Hayes or Lady MacBeth?
By
by Tom Hall – Do you remember Gabby Hayes? He was a fine actor who built a film career playing sidekicks to younger, better looking leads. As sidekick, he provided comic relief, and dramatic motivation for the hero. Sidekicks are a useful, when entirely fictional, device in movies and TV shows. But not so much [...]
McCain Family Values
By
At a time when millions of families know that they will be losing their homes to foreclosure, and when hundreds of thousands of people who would like to work to support their families, but can’t find even poverty-level, minimum wage jobs, it might be useful to spend a few paragraphs considering “Family Values.” It seems [...]
Race: The Elephant in the Room
By
A recent study of voter fears shows that a large percentage of white, Democratic voters won’t vote for Barack Obama because his is black. The study reprises patterns that have driven race relations in business and society since our earliest colonial days and continue to this day. Even while agreeing that Republican / McCain policies [...]
Fundamentalists and McCain: They Deserve Each Other
By
Until August 29, one of the things that defined John McCain was his claim to being a straight-shooter. In his book, Faith of My Fathers, he put this claim into religious context: “Glory belongs to the act of being constant to something greater than yourself, to a cause, to your principles, to the people on [...]
Petersburg: Race, Religion, and Politics
By
I’m writing this in Jamestown, Virginia, on a day trip to see the new archeology work on the colony, which was settled here in 1607. I’m staying in Petersburg, a small city south of Richmond. Petersburg is a market town with railroads. It is the city to which Grant chased Lee, at the end of [...]
Getting Beyond Lies, Personal Attacks, and Evasions with the Palin/McCain Ticket
By
I confess that I have laughed at many of the Sarah Palin jokes in my email this week. But is this what we want our campaign, and our national leadership, to become?
Proposition HATE
By
For four days, Democrats reminded us what it is to dream of a better world. The old lion, Ted Kennedy anchored the week, reminding us that Democrats have long championed the dream of a better America that can and should be built by a nation blessed with advantages and resources which most nations can’t imagine. [...]
Justice and the Liberal Media
By
by Tom Hall – Let us think about activist judges and the liberal media. You know what activist judges are. They are those men who use their judicial offices to impose their will on the country, ignoring the will of the people and sometimes ignoring the law.
Truth or Consequences
By
Truth or Consequences was once a TV game show and a town in New Mexico. In the real world, there is always truth, and ignoring the truth has terrible consequences. In Vietnam, we tried to demonstrate that advanced technology could conquer Stone Age nationalism. Using guns that could fire thousands of bullets a minute, chemicals [...]
John McCain’s Olympic-Class Flip-Flopping
By
by Tom Hall – As we approach the start of the Summer Olympics in Beijing, it might be interesting to consider some of the political gymnastics going on here at home. Of course, George Bush is heading up the Republican flip-flop team. But how to score his recent policy gymnastics is exposing wide differences, depending [...]
Jesse and Joe
By
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill, last night, Alive as you and me. Says I “But Joe you’re ten years dead.” “I never died says he.” This old song popped into my head while I was reading a rightwing blogger’s paean to Jesse Helms. The blogger praised Helms as a “heroic warrior for conservative values.” [...]
How Did the Pilgrims Get It So Wrong?
By
Remember your history class? In 1620, The Pilgrims left England and set up a colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts, which was supposed to be more Biblically rigorous than the licentious English society they left behind. Their colony was to be governed by Biblical principles. In 1630, the Puritans arrived a little north of Plymouth and founded [...]
Thoughts on the Anti-Gay Marriage Campaign
By
The Bible says that Solomon had 700 wives. David had wives too numerous to number. And Gideon had so many one wonders when he had time to practice with his trumpet. These Biblical characters came to mind as I listened to people campaigning for a November ballot measure to overturn the California Supreme Court’s decision [...]
PCL offers monthly Open House Events on the 2nd Saturday at 2pm and 3rd Thursday at 6pm. Click here to learn more.
Recent Comments